Two earthquakes near the Lancashire coast have shaken homes in Blackpool, with the strongest tremor having a magnitude of 3.3 on the Richter scale.
That’s going to piss of the greenies. We’ve had an earthquake of about this magnitude with fracking and now we’ve got two without fracking. Going to be difficult to insist that we must frack for fear of earthquakes, isn’t it?
Lived for many years in Blackpool and surrounding area. Several earthquakes over the years when fracking was not known. Now I live in a different part of the country, again with very occasional earthquakes (a couple in 10 years) and no fracking around here. The UK has earthquakes, has had them all along and will continue to have them.
I’ve never understood how fracking would cause an earthquake. An earthquake is a shift of the whole crust, to catch up with the motion of the mantle, isn’t it? No amount of pumping water within the crust is going to affect the crust/mantle interface. I mean, I’m not saying it might not cause bits of crustal rock to shudder perhaps locally, but that’s not actually an earthquake, is it?
Fairly significant pendantry (in that I know what you meant but what you have actually written is the inverse of the argument you are denigrating):
Not at all. It only increases concern. The worry about seismic events is not earthquakes per se but damage that could be caused to wells and well casings (you’ll remember the PH1 was deformed after a quake), and what effect there might be on faults which up until now are holding saline and freshwater aquifers apart.
If you take the trouble to look at the BGS data on yesterday’s quakes you will see that both were in the middle of an Irish Sea offshore oil and gas field.
I suggest before either the pro or anti frackers get smug about any of this we wait for some expert scientific opinion.
“…have shaken homes…” ???
To the extent of someone slamming the front door?
We had a 6 plus couple years back. Epicenter was about the same distance as this one & indeed a few houses nearer were damaged. First I heard about it was reading the paper. And I’m living at the foot of a 3 1/2 km high mountain with slopes too steep to walk up & a snow cap on the top.
It’s all explained by geological homeopathy. Gaia retains the “memory” of fracking and the later earthquakes are her screaming that we mustn’t interfere with her natural balance and goodness. Or something.
Ragamala>
Are you another of the spoof accounts?
“It only increases concern. The worry about seismic events is not earthquakes per se but damage that could be caused to wells and well casings (you’ll remember the PH1 was deformed after a quake), and what effect there might be on faults which up until now are holding saline and freshwater aquifers apart.”
Nice work. Mimicking that kind of idiocy so accurately is surprisingly hard to do.
Richter Scale hasn’t been used since the 1970s. The correct scale is the Moment Magnitude Scale. This is a measurement of the energy released in a earthquake. This is very useful if you a seismologist/geophysicist making an academic study, but tells you nothing about what is happening where you are at any given time. Inverse square law and that. A magnitude 8 earthquake the other side of the planet isn’t going to wake the cat.
For your average punter, the useful scale isn’t magnitude, it is intensity. That is, the amount of shaking going on where you are. Where I live the Tohoku earthquake was Shindo (intensity) 5.
“Many people are considerably frightened and find it difficult to move.”
No shit sherlock. I couldn’t move, could hardly stand up.
“Hanging objects swing violently. Most unstable items fall. Dishes in a cupboard and books fall and furniture moves.”
Oh yes. It was a mess. The entire alcohol cabinet at our local supermarket turned over. Needless to say, I was first on the scene with my emergency straw.
I grew up in the middle of New Zealand, right on a fault line, and we used to get earthquakes of around 5 all the time. The only way we could tell the difference between an earthquake and a truck going up the nearby hill was that the earthquake set all the cups swinging on their hooks.
It wasn’t felt stood on the ground floor of the house. Lots of those saying they felt it (with a touch of hyperbole, for the newspapers) were in bed, which seemingly makes the intensity more sensitive.
Fuck the Green Mafia!
Ian B, earthquakes are not always just a fault slipping. It’s also the ground re-adjusting after it’s been deformed by the tidal forces of the moon and settling from the ice age to name two causes.
Did you know the whole earth surface moves 2cm as the moon passes over. The whole country (UK) is tipping down in the south as Scotland recovers from the huge amount of ice that it had on it tens of thousands of years ago.
What fracking could cause are a very minor earth movements. The greenies call them earthquakes because they have been trained to use the right words to make it sound bad, just like every single sex offender in the US is a potential pedophile.
Locally (at the point of the quake) the magnitude can be high, but the inverse sq law means that by the time it’s felt at the surface it’s usually less than a track passing by. So it can sounds massive (and the simple minded greenies can easily be persuaded to think so) but in reality you would hardly feel it.
How many we’re killed or injured? How many houses were damaged? You would think this info would be in the news report, given that it was an ‘earthquake’ n all
It was caused by all those windmills off the coast.
Yeah, a 3.3 is the sort of size where you can’t be sure if it happened or if you left your phone on vibrate and someone called. The biggest I’ve ever experienced was a 7.6 but it was some way off so it was only MM V. There was a 6.2 nearby in 2009 and that was fun for a while.
It could have been caused by a racing car.
I think the British fraccking “earthquakes” were about 2.3 and 1.5 on the richter scale. Since each level is tenfold above the other the fraccing ones seem to be about 1/10th and 1/50th of this natural one.